The Travels of Jaimie McPheeters (Arbor House Library of Contemporary Americana) (66 page)

Tell you something—if you came back, I wouldn’t mind. Not just a sister, either. The main thing that came to me tonight was
that I used to not be very smart, but I am now. It wouldn’t be at all bad if you came back. My father once said that you were just as white as I am, inside. I see what he means now. When he said that was not in my smart period.

As stated, kindly come back as soon as convenient. (In a few days.)

Sincerely yours
,
J
AIMIE
(M
C
P
HEETERS)

P.S.
You don’t owe Mr. Coe anything, don’t pay him anything. (Frankly, to be candid, I always thought he had very ugly hair.)

In the next few days we got letters from the people at Vernon, in reply to ones we’d mailed out earlier. All hands were well and happy. The butchery was thriving, and Coulter had taken a real interest in helping Uncle Ned Reeves build up the mule-packing service. In their hearts, Jennie said, they hoped we wouldn’t strike it rich in San Francisco, because they had no wish to leave, now. Instead, why didn’t we come on back? She and Buck Coulter were to be married Christmas morning.

“Let’s go!” I burst out at my father, standing in front of the post office. “If we leave now we can get there for the wedding. We’ve got money enough, too.”

“Son,” he said, looking determined but sad, “when we left home I promised to make a fortune in California. To date, we have failed, through no fault of our own. Gold-mining had its chance, and missed fire. The butchery business is for butchers; mule-packing opens glorious vistas for mules, a chance for travel and refreshment. But for us, San Francisco remains, despite its essentially hostile attitude, the city of Opportunity, a western Philadelphia in embryo, stirring, swelling, a rare commercial bud on the threshold of blossom. My intention is to grow with the city. And in that line, we’ll give it a year, no matter if we starve on the streets in the process.”

“Never mind,” I said wearily, “let’s get back to the stand.”

But our situation at the stand never was the same again. Because of his work with the shipwreck, my father began to get some medical trade. It shook him. His hands started trembling every time
somebody appeared at the stand and asked for help. Mostly the better element didn’t bother to pay, but the gambler bunch were very prompt and generous. It’s an odd thing, but here he was in San Francisco, with almost identically the same kind of custom as he had back home. Only now the gamblers were in fancy hotels, what the Reverend Ebersohl called “gambling hells,” instead of being on shantyboats. Otherwise, nothing was changed. Still, some of the doctors took to throwing him cases they didn’t care for—baby deliveries and that, where it called for visits at late hours.

So, much as he hated it, he was back doctoring.

And what happened?

One afternoon he came in from a case and seemed in fine spirits, very worked up about the treatment he’d prescribed. This was unusual, because he generally didn’t care to mention any of them at all. Throwing his bag on the stand, which I ran in his absence, he said, “I’d suspected this right along, in spite of what Wilkins [Dr. Wilkins of the City Hospital] maintained. The woman has catarrhal gastritis,
not
a stricture of the pylorus. Her symptoms were plain as a signpost: uneasiness, heat, pain at the epigastrium, flatulence and distension, ropy vomit, greenish bile. Sallow circle around the eyes, a loaded tongue, sense of anxiety at the praecordia, bowels costive, urine scanty, an intense loathing of animal foods. Now what does that mean to you?”

While he’d talked, the Reverend Ebersohl came up and sat down to listen, his clear, deep innocent eyes touched with sympathy.

“It adds up to one thing, one only,” he said in his booming voice, not able to fight the subject he was hipped on. “I don’t need to, but I’ll spell it out—D-E-V-I-L. For reasons denied to the lowly mortal, Beelzebub crept into that poor woman’s intestines.”

“If so, my examination failed to uncover him,” said my father, who was a little flushed now, but even more talkative than before. Feeling sick, I sat dumbly, realizing I should have expected it, under the circumstances.

“—in cases of these kinds, it’s always well to open the bowels with an enema—pint of salt water, two if she can retain it. If no
nausea, Compound powder of Jalap 3iJ to Water Oss.
Then
, an infusion of the bark of the Peach tree to control irritation, taken only from the young limbs. After
that
, teaspoon of Mint Water and Bismuth every half hour. And finally, a mild stomachic to restore digestion—Hydrastis, or something of the sort. I’ll see to it tomorrow. Yes, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. What a day is tomorrow—”

He began to sing, and when I could face it, I looked up at the Reverend Ebersohl. He hadn’t turned a hair, but sat regarding my father steadily, not disappointed or shocked or set back in any way. The excuses had already taken hold automatically.

“Your father’s been under a great strain,” he said aside to me. “Who among us, God’s poor servants, can measure the sensitivity of another? Come on, my boy, we’ll get him into bed.”

And when my father was stretched out in the tent, making a fuss because he said he had a date to go sailing with the Mayor, Reverend Ebersohl sank to his knees and offered up a genuine crusher of a prayer. But did he pray for my father to straighten up and behave? Not so you could notice it. His remarks were along the line of abusing himself, for being so busy with other work, and so blind, that he’d failed to take note of his friends.

And all the time, his voice rising up in competition, but not winning, my father was singing “Angus McGregor, Helpless in the Heather.”

It was embarrassing.

This began a long series of such ruckuses and was when we began to go seriously downhill in San Francisco. Days went by when he wouldn’t take a drink at all; then, set off by somebody’s medical troubles, usually a child’s, he would reel home drunk. Never angry or troublesome, you know, but released from his worries. And, of course, no good to himself or anybody else. Again, he mightn’t come home at all but would go to the United States or El Dorado and gamble away whatever he had on him. If the Reverend Ebersohl was handy, he helped me straighten him out, not ever with a
reproach, nor a mark of impatience, but only an increased resolve to get at the real culprit, who he said was the Devil.

“Never fear, my boy,” he cried one day when the people at the United States brought my father home, “we’ll get him in the end. This poor suffering physician, our honored friend and parent, is only the hapless instrument. It’s the Devil has done it. We’ll get him; we’ll flay him right out of the state.”

Reverend Ebersohl got so exercised over the Devil on this occasion that he did something he rarely ever tried; he went right into the United States and, standing on a table, preached a sermon on Temperance. Now that gambler crowd liked my father, and they liked Reverend Ebersohl too, though they ragged him some, so they knocked off as polite as pie to let him preach. A few quiet games of seven-up and such continued in the corners; otherwise people listened.

At the beginning, Mr. Wilcox, the proprietor of the United States, “guaranteed” Reverend Ebersohl silence for half an hour, and he kept his word.

It was a powerful sermon, though I’ve got to admit that many and many a time I failed to entirely get Reverend Ebersohl’s drift, much as I admired him. My father said the same: “He’s a great man, with a lion’s heart. Smart, too, but the messages come out addled.” I disagreed with him there; it wasn’t so much addled as he got off the point. The point here tonight was temperance, but it wriggled out of his grip.

After knocking rum in a general way, along with the people who sold it, while holding out hope that it might be mainly the Devil, he said, “As I look over this group of sinners, I see upwards of two dozen men that I’ve saved with regularity ever since I came to San Francisco. Yes, and I’ll save them that many more before I’m done. I’m thinking of one citizen—naming no names—as my gaze sweeps around, a man of great potential, educated, accomplished, handsome in appearance,
and it was not a week ago
that he appeared on his knees before me to promise, ‘So help me God, I’ll never
drink another drop!’ Two days later, I found him drunk on the streets. For shame!

“Another such came to me a short time ago, and after relating the sad tale of his sorrows, asked to sign the pledge. I gave him a pledge and he signed it, saying, ‘There it is; my name is there for once and all. Henceforth I’m the living spirit of sobriety.’ The next day, as I passed up California Street, I saw him with a demijohn in his hand. ‘Why, my friend, what are you doing with that stuff?’ said I. ‘Oh,’ said he, ‘I thought since I was knocking off for good this time, I’d just take one more nip in farewell.’

“My dear friends,” cried Reverend Ebersohl, “such is the bondage to your prevailing sins, whatever they may be. Chains of habit are stronger than chains of steel; you cannot break them without help from Jesus.

“At the moment when I was talking to that poor fellow mentioned before, a candidate for the chain gang was conducted along the street, with a heavy shackle around his leg. Said I to the crowd, ‘Look at that miserable creature. How gladly would he kick off that heavy chain and be free! He cannot break it. And yet he is no more a prisoner today, under that heavy chain, in the hands of his keeper, than you are under the chains of awful habit, in the hands of
your
keeper, the Devil, by whom you are led, captive by his will.’

“Then a man under the Devil’s influence had the effrontery to speak up from the rear and say, ‘Oh, well, if that be true, it’s no use to try to straighten up. You might as well leave us alone!’ ”

Reverend Ebersohl was going at his best clip, and the crowd appreciated it, calling out “Amen,” and “Give it to ’em, Reverend,” to emphasize points. They weren’t ragging, either. They saw the sense to what he said, so far, and were with him every inch of the way.

So he said, “The Holy Spirit is looking at each of you now”—a man in a black suit tried to crawl under a table here; I don’t know whether he was skylarking or not—“and listening to every pulsation of your moral heart. And were He to reveal what has passed there this day, how shocking a revelation He would make!
It is not by the professions of the mouth, but by the conduct of men, that we learn the orthodoxy of their hearts. A miserable gambler said to me only a short time ago, ‘I came to California with exactly twenty-five cents, but I had good luck playing cards and set up a monte table, and thanks be to God, I have been very successful.’

“What priceless insolence! But wait a minute, hold your horses, that isn’t the worst. A wretched rumseller over here on Jackson Street filched the pockets of a poor fellow, wrecked his constitution, blighted all his hopes for time and eternity, unstrung his nervous system, and drove him into delirium tremens; and when his poor victim was dying, I’m blessed if he didn’t come to me and say, ‘Reverend, I’ll ask you to step round and pray for so-and-so’s soul.
I’m worried about him
.’ can you believe it?

“Why, these gamblers on the Plaza here, whenever they shoot a fellow, go right off for a preacher to pray over their dead. One who came for me to preach at the funeral of C.B., who was shot the night before just there in that large saloon, said, ‘We thought it would be a pity to bury the man without religious ceremonies. It will be a comfort to his friends, too, to know that he had a decent Christian burial.’

“Get thee behind me, Satan. Or come out and fight in the open.”

Everybody cried “A-a-a-amen,” and “If you’re aiming to fight the Reverend, fight fair,” relishing every word. But I’ll be a baboon if Reverend Ebersohl didn’t switch off here and commence to explain about the “techniques” of street preaching. He told some of his early struggles, how he had to compete with other entertainments, and said, “If by a cry of fire, or otherwise, your congregation is scattered, do not be discouraged, but watch your opportunity. Set your sails to take the breeze, and you will probably double or quadruple your congregation in five minutes.

“Once, in Belair Market, Baltimore City, I was half through my discourse when a large funeral procession passed by, accompanied by a band of music Now that band was unfair competition; I saw it so then, and I still do. The melody took the ears of my audience,
and when they broke loose to join, I roared ‘Brethren, we can make better music than that’; and struck up the very best song at my command. I hesitate, in modesty before our Lord, to tell you the result. A friend with a good view of everything said at least a hundred of the procession shook loose and came to the preaching. What he said, more specifically, was, and I ask you to take it with a pinch of salt, ‘Reverend, we didn’t leave anything of that funeral except the horses and the corpse.’ ”

Reverend Ebersohl stopped a second, beaming, because he
did
have a good audience tonight, and said, “Gentlemen, where was I?”

“You were speaking on the general subject of Temperance,” said one man drily.

“Oh, yes, Temperance. On another occasion, some rough fellows next to my stand got up a dogfight, in the way of providing competition of
that
sort, and off they went, hissing and whooping. I cried, ‘Run, boys, run!
There’s
a rare opportunity! A glorious entertainment, that! What an intellectual feast it must be to enlightened, high-minded American gentlemen to see a couple of dogs fight!’ By that time, I’d recaptured the last man of them, so the good-natured dogs, having nobody to prod them, trotted away in a comradely spirit. I said, ‘Boys, I don’t blame you for seeking enjoyment and trying to be happy. God, who made us and endowed us with wonderful powers of intellect and heart, designed us to be happy, hence this insatiable thirst for happiness that constitutes the mainspring of human actions. The difference between us is in regard to the source whence we derive happiness. You have tried many sources, money-making and money spending, rum drinking and gambling, with occasional boy and dogfights. Bills were posted all through your streets last week, promising a rich treat for immortal souls on Sunday in American Valley. The intellectual feast to commence with a fight between a bull and a grizzly bear. The second course to consist of a magnificent dinner, and as much whiskey as could be desired at two bits a nip. The third course to consist of music and dancing among the men
(ladies being scarce), which might be protracted till every soul was satisfied.’ ”